Escape to Baja: Three Blissed-Out Days Touring Mexico on a Harley-Davidson

Germans. It was always Germans. Germans on Harleys in the desert. A platoon of friendly dudes taking a break from the Fatherland to explore the arid expanses of the American Southwest on big old Yankee bikes, V-twins shimmering in the heat. To a man, they’d be swaddled in EagleRider jackets. They’d come over, rent bikes from the company, maybe take a guided tour up Route 66. Hang out with donkeys in Oatman, Arizona, and see the Grand Canyon. For them, it’s like a foot-to-the-floor autobahn run in a Porsche 911 Turbo would be to an American. But EagleRider doesn’t just run tours of the dry, empty corners of America. They’ve got guides and locations dotting the globe. So when they asked if I wanted to go for a ride down the Pacific Coast, I asked, “What about Baja?”

I grew up on Highway 1: traveled every inch from Leggett down to Dana Point. Summer vacations in Fort Bragg, quick getaways to Bodega Bay or Santa Cruz. The yearly automotive bacchanal at Pebble Beach; PCH as a route to LAX and south to Orange County when I lived in San Pedro. I love 1, but 1 is mine any time I have a free day and the inclination to see the ocean. So we went to Mexico, somewhere I’d never been, despite having resided my entire life within a day’s drive of the border.

Since EagleRider offers a selection of motorcycles biased heavily in favor of American iron, I went as heavy and American as I could get, choosing a Harley-Davidson Ultra Limited, a loaded version of Harley’s classic Electra Glide touring bike, 904 pounds of the Motor Company’s classic touring setup. Batwing fairing, 103-cubic-inch twin-cam pushrod V-twin with a couple of radiators discreetly tucked into the fairing lowers, side cases, and a capacious top trunk with a rack. Indian’s recent entry into the heavy-touring segment, the Roadmaster, is flashier—simultaneously more modern and more baroque—but the Hog is an institution.

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After a night at La Jolla’s Lodge at Torrey Pines, we picked up our bikes at EagleRider’s San Diego location, which doubles as an Indian dealership, and rumbled down I-5 to the border, winding through the Mexican checkpoint maze without much more than a glance from the guards. Free, we trundled south to Rosarito for coffee and pastries. EagleRider’s excitable CEO, Chris McIntyre, was bopping around, wide-eyed and thrilled, backslapping and high-fiving. We sat by a midmorning campfire on a cliff and sipped bottled water and excellent joe. I could’ve spent the rest of the day right there, staring out at the still, aquamarine expanse of the sea.

Back on the bikes, we wound our way inland. The storms that have spent the winter pummeling California have zero regard for international borders. Therefore, the lush-seeming hills were probably about as verdant as they ever get. The pace set by the guides was reasonable, none of the other riders felt compelled to hot-dog, and I was starting to feel really comfortable with the big Harley. It doesn’t have a Honda Gold Wing’s low-speed stability or take a set in high-speed corners quite like Moto Guzzi’s off-the-wall MGX-21 bagger, but there’s a sense on the Electra Glide that you’re riding a damn motorcycle that’s impossible to discount.

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We parked the bikes in a dirt turnout and traveled by van and Jeep up a dirt road to La Estancia, a middle-of-nowhere rancho that apparently booms on the weekend. Lunch was lazy and delicious; the subsequent ride to Ensenada was a blissed-out, leisurely ramble.

We wandered Ensenada after dinner. It was the off season; the town was quiet, the weather temperate. Kyra Sacdalan and Justin Coffey, a professional moto-adventure couple and veterans of the peninsula, showed us the starting line of the Baja 1000, then took us to the capacious Papas & Beer, which was utterly devoid of people, followed by a bar down the street where it’s claimed the margarita was invented. Hussong’s wasn’t exactly hopping, but there was enough of a crowd to keep the mariachi bands circulating. A group set up next to our table. The guitarist had a little solid-state Peavey amp with an old Metal Zone distortion pedal zip-tied to the handle. A motorcycle battery supplied the power. The bass player’s upright instrument was made of unfinished plywood. The drummer had a snare, a couple of cowbells, and a crash cymbal. McIntyre overeagerly called for Pink Floyd. I cringed a little. I felt like a gringo.

They launched into a shockingly great rendition of “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).” A man came around with a pair of electrified metal tubes. The goal was to hold on as long as possible without saying “Uncle” as he increased the power. I tapped out quickly. We dropped our peanut shells on the floor. Creedence. Santana. The drummer was slaying; the guitarist was wailing; the bassist twirled the high holy hell out of his thunderbox. These guys, without a doubt, were the most fantastic bar band I’d ever seen. I stepped out for a cigarette and remembered that the late Brock Yates had been arrested outside Hussong’s for relieving himself against the wall back in 1983. We departed in cabs for the hotel. A lone federale watched us go.

In the morning, we walked down to the marina and boarded a cabin cruiser to catch some fish and watch for whales. Photographer Todd Williams and EagleRider chief administrative officer Jeff Brown seemed to snag the majority of the yellowtail, the reeling in of which caused a great congregation of looky-loos each time. I gazed back toward the city from the ocean, wondering where in all that haze the Fender guitar factory was. Of all the guitars I own, a humble Ensenada-built Stratocaster is one of my favorites. It felt good to understand where it came from.

On our return to dry land, we hopped on the bikes, paused to wolf down some phenomenal tacos, and then made for the Valle de Guadalupe, the heart of Baja’s wine industry. Our hotel stood up a two-mile dirt road that EagleRider VP of Experience Shawn Fechter described as “pretty gnarly.” I didn’t love the hefty Harley’s behavior on dirt and gravel, so I tucked in behind Kyra and followed her line through the ruts and pits, at one point power-walking the lumbering Electra Glide within what felt like inches of an inconsiderate first-gen Honda Pilot driver, goosing the throttle and feathering the clutch to keep the bike from sliding down a silty incline into the oxidized ute. McIntyre and Justin Coffey, on the other hand, came tearing down the road, the CEO standing on the floorboards of his Harley bagger, thwacking the pipes on the ragged, undulating ground while Justin used his BMW R1200GS adventure bike in the manner the Bavarians intended.

After dinner, we gathered around an expertly constructed campfire. Fechter produced a cheapo nylon-string guitar. He kept handing me the thing. I’d noodle on it while folks talked. I quietly played the Minutemen’s “Corona” to myself, because if you’re a punker of a certain age in Mexico and somebody gives you a guitar, you’re honor bound to play “Corona,” D. Boon’s poignant sketch of honky guilt on a Baja beach. I handed the guitar back to Fechter. He played “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and a sweet little original about a video-store clerk he once knew who appeared to subsist entirely on chicharrón. He passed the guitar to another musically inclined writer and then back to me. I was at a loss. I knew nobody at a campfire wanted to hear “In a Free Land” or “Clash City Rockers.” Idea! I whanged the two-chord D-E riff and started singing, “Generals gathered in their masses . . . ”

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Everybody joined in, “Just like witches at black masses…”

When in doubt, play Sabbath. A couple who’d joined our party were so inexplicably enthralled by the haphazard performance that the man called me weird and, in the next breath, suggested that he’d considered surrendering his lady friend to me for the night. Bemused, tired, and fresh out of songs, I retired to bed alone, lungs full of wood and tobacco smoke. As I drifted off, it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to play “N.I.B.”

The next morning took us to over the increasingly dry hills to Tecate and the U.S. border. There’s something claustrophobic and hard about Tecate; I didn’t care for it as much as Rosarito, Ensenada, or the quiet rolling of the Valle de Guadalupe. But the man at the ice-cream store was friendly, and his cool treats were welcome. At the border, Customs and Border Protection treated us suspiciously; par for the course. Welcome back to America. I turned to Coffey and asked, “Justin, why do I feel less free now that we’re back home?”

“Because you are.”

The night before, the man who’d contemplated offering me his companion—he was a stockbroker type visiting the Valle for the weekend—called Baja “the land of personal responsibility,” noting that the steps are often uneven. That you tread at your own risk. EagleRider’s guides make all of that a lot easier for Baja novices. And if the tour is all-inclusive and tightly scheduled, it also takes you to spots you’d struggle to find on your own with an entire free month on your hands. As somebody who prefers riding solo and finding his own way, I was surprised at just how much I enjoyed the experience. In fact, I had a hard time wiping a smile off my face during the entirety of my time in Mexico. Those desert-traversing Germans? They’re clearly on to something.